We hear from the high-speed rail authority and many politicians that high-speed rail in California will be profitable. After all, the Train à Grande Vitesse (TGV) in France and the Shinkansen in Japan are profitable – or so they say.
If you take a closer look, the French high-speed rail, the TGV is operated by SNCF, Société Nationale des Chemins de Fer Français, a public company that operates the trains in France and which, indeed, is profitable. The train infrastructure in France – the tracks and all control systems are owned by Réseau Ferré de France (RFF), a state run company which maintains the infrastructure and services the debt. RFF is heavily subsidized by the French government and loses money. Combining the losses and subsidies of RFF with the profits of SNCF, the French taxpayers are footing the bills of around one billion euros per year (exact numbers are published for 2006 and 2007).
In Japan, the huge debt accumulated by the Japan National Railroad of more than $300 billion was transferred to the national debt after the re-structuring of the train system in 1987. Three of the eight companies formed after the 1987 re-structuring are operating the major train lines, including the Shinkansen trains, and have been privatized since then. These three Japan Railroad companies are profitable; the remaining five are government owned and are not profitable. The enormous debt of the entire rail system is paid back by the Japanese taxpayers.
For countries like Japan and France it still makes sense to subsidize an overall train system that includes high-speed rail connection between metropolitan centers. In these countries, where automobile and airplane travel are very expensive, the fast trains connecting these metropolitan areas provide an excellent alternative to airplanes and cars. TGV, for example, is fully integrated with the two major airports in the country, offering tickets for shared train-plane travel. More than 90 million people in France use the high-speed rail between Paris and most major cities in France and Europe, including London. More than 150 million use it in Japan.
These numbers, however, are dwarfed by the use of the metropolitan transit systems – close to 30 billion riders in Tokyo and three billion riders in Paris per year.
It’s fairly easy to see the attraction of high-speed rail if you do not need a car at the beginning and end of the trip because there is a great transit system in place. Conversely, without an efficient metropolitan transportation system available in the Bay Area and Southern California, it’s hard to imagine how HSR will succeed here. San Francisco, with a population of 800,000, has an annual ridership of about 310 million using the public transit system, the bulk of which use Muni. How can we expect to attract 50 million high-speed rail travelers per year between the Bay Area and Southern California without any efficient high-capacity local transit system? Should we expect millions of visitors to get off the train in San Francisco and take Muni to their final destinations or walk to the nearest BART?
It seems we are planning to put the cart before the horse; we need a good metropolitan mass-transit system first and high-speed rail second.
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